IBM To Make Options IT's Existing Platform Cloud-Ready for Financial Markets

Options IT, a service provider specializing in financial technology, recently announced a cloud partnership with IBM (News - Alert). Provider of high-performance financial technology infrastructure-as-a-service to buyside and sellside firms, Options IT is reported to have leveraged IBM technology to deliver private cloud technology to its financial services clients.

Options IT’s clients include hedge funds, proprietary trading shops or trading desks inside of investment banks. The company’s private cloud solutions enable clients to take advantage of global trading opportunities by leveraging a virtual plug and play technology environment for their trading models and other financial applications via the Options PIPE platform.

As the company integrates IBM technology into its existing global platform, the company said that its clients will be able to greatly lower the time to market for launching new trading strategies.

Options IT announced that its private cloud infrastructure platform will be leveraging IBM BladeCenter technology, located at each of its 18 global data centers. Rapid provisioning of new servers will enable Options IT to scale services up or down depending on market conditions and customer demand. This compact architecture, the company explained, will minimize rack-space requirements. This will enable Option IT to reduce costs on the one hand and pass those efficiencies on to their clients, on the other.

"As the global markets have become increasingly fragmented, trading strategies have become increasingly reliant on sophisticated trading and risk management models. And as the costs of managing the trading strategy have risen, we've seen a dramatic shift in the number of firms outsourcing the underlying technology infrastructure, management and market connectivity needed to run a competitive financial services business. With the Options PIPE, clients can plug their applications into an existing private cloud infrastructure, pay only for the resources they use, and have the ability to move their strategies around the globe, on-demand, when the opportunities arise,” said Nigel Kneafsey, CEO of Option IT.

“In today's competitive global business environment, companies are recognizing the need to reduce complexity and cost in order to increase their business agility. To do so, many organizations are accessing key business applications through cloud deployments. IBM expects the global cloud computing market to grow at a compounded annual rate of 28 percent from $47 billion in 2008 to $126 billion by 2012,” Andy Park, cloud leader for IBM U.K. and Ireland explained in a statement.

Mention should be made of the IBM’s recent listing of six types of partners that help move customers to cloud computing. These include partners who build private or public clouds for clients, develop cloud applications, resell cloud services, extend cloud functionality and aggregate multiple clouds, he said. The company said that all of them can take advantage of IBM's new cloud computing lab, based in Hursley in the U.K.